Google: Olympics Fuel Mobile Search Surge

Smartphone searches for information on the Olympics are surpassing those made on tablets and desktop devices, according to data released by Google.

The search giant revealed the data on a blog post, explaining that Olympic related searches had risen 10-fold in the first week of the Games, as people around the world keep up with results on the move.

For example, in the UK 46 percent of all Olympic searches were made on smartphones and tablets. In the U.S., 47 percent of Olympics-related searches were mobile.

During some key moments mobile searches have been the predominate way in which information was gathered. For example, at the end of the opening ceremony when Paul McCartney appeared, searches for the former member of The Beatles rocketed, with smartphone searches far exceeding those of desktops or tablets:

Dai Pham and Adam Grunewald of Google's mobile ads marketing team said the figures underlined the new way in which users consume information.

"Olympic fever is a global phenomenon, and mobile searches are letting everyone get immediate information, in real time, about what's happening moment by moment," they said. "It's clear that these are the first multi-screen Olympics, as users are engaging across TV, computers, smartphones and tablets, often at the same time."

The use of mobile applications to keep track of the Olympics is also huge, with the chief information officer of the London Organising Committee of the Olympics Games (LOCOG) revealing last week that its official results app had been downloaded over 8.1 million times.

About the author

Dan Worth is the news editor for V3 having first joined the site as a reporter in November 2009. He specialises in a raft of areas including fixed and mobile telecoms, data protection, social media and government IT. Before joining V3 Dan covered communications technology, data handling and resilience in the emergency services sector on the BAPCO Journal.